April - Holiday

Welcome dancers at the resort

April started with a family holiday on Bintan Island, a 55min ferry ride across the South China Sea from the East Coast of Singapore. Bintan Island belongs to Indonesia, so we needed to cross customs and get a visa, luckily it's possible on arrival. But to book the ferry tickets, Katrin spend quite a while on the computer to type in all the passport details for each family member! As did Karsten while on board the ferry, but with his pen - surprise surprise, as he is our computer whizz and I am the pen and paper lady:

Another dancer group

Bintan Island is one hour behind Singapore, so it meant we left Singapore at 11:10am and arrived in Bintan Ferry Terminal at 11:05 am - time travel! 

Bintan vs Singapore time

We stayed in one of many resorts and they are planning to build more there. Everything is in Singapore Dollars and using Singapore power plugs. Apparently it was established with financial help from the "Little Red Dot". 

Our hotel was great, it had a family pool with two slides, you can guess where we spent most of the time. There was also another pool with a swim-in bar and basketball hoops. Both pools were unusually shaped, it was fun to swim around the corners and under the bridges.  

Pool with swim-in bar 

View from our balcony

Here are a few impressions during our stay:

Jonas jumping

Esther jumping too

Yannic and David walking on the water

Laser-Quest

Beach, glorious beach!

We had the choice of three restaurants (standard, Mediterranean and Japanese) and a few cafe style eateries. The children were very impressed with the Japanese Teppanyaki Bar. Those chefs put on a good show - dinner with a show!

In one of the cafes we ordered mocktails (cocktails without alcohol), the lady then made us an offer to double the next order of mocktails, so we ended up with 12 mocktails for the price of 9. The next day we repeated the order, due to a misunderstanding we ended up with 6 coconut milk and vanilla ice cream based cocktails, boy, that was rich!
Here is a photo of an Indonesian signature cake: Lapis Surabaya, a yummy sponge cake (vanilla - chocolate - vanilla) - just to avoid misunderstanding: cake in the front, Katrin behind it ;-)

Three happy children and an afternoon tea spread:

Noah and ice-cream:

An impressive coffee machine

These are a few photos of our delicious dinner in the Japanese restaurant, the children were impressed by the flambé variation:

On our way back to Singapore we had to 'cek-in bagasi' as a sign told us, no need for translation here.

cek-in bagasi

Esther bought a little instrument called Karimba ("thumb piano"), which originated apparently in Zimbabwe, but is sold at every shop in Bintan, one of the salesmen entertain us during our wait at departure.

BACK IN SINGAPORE:

We came back to celebrate Good Friday and Jesus' resurrection. Our church here (Methodist Church) presented seven symbols of the resurrection which then 'decorated' the altar:

CLOTH - used as Jesus' burial clothes was found empty
SPICES - brought by the women to embalm Jesus, they were the first witnesses to His resurrection
STONE - this seal of the tomb was rolled away
BREAD - on the road to Emmaus Jesus talked with two of His followers, only when He broke the bread with them, they recognised Him
WINE - representing Jesus' blood and His death for us
CROSS - is empty
CANDLE - Jesus is the light of the world

Jonas had a sleepover at a friends' place, Katrin and the other children accompanied him part of the way. It's good to meet Jonas' new friends, since we jumped into life here without the time to gradually get to know others from Kindy onwards. At the meeting point/bus stop we found a Reflexology Path, the children had a blast:

Don't they just love it?!

It was quite painful nevertheless the children conducted races on it - ready for an Indian fire walk!
The pictures show in the background a row of houses around the park, a rather typical outlook here.

Another typical view is the count down on traffic lights:

Katrin and the children saw this sign on the way to the shopping centre Bukit Timah Plaza:

Apparently there was a fatal accident and the authorities are calling for witnesses. The date and time when the accident happened are recorded too. This sign was up for over a month.

Below is a picture of a very handy band-aid, it was easy to pull off because it had a kind of handle: part of one side was bend over and therefore not sticking to the skin:

JACOB BALLAS CHILDREN GARDEN
Since the children had holidays we took the time to visit the Jacob Ballas Children Garden, a section of the Botanical Gardens down the road from us. We had a great time.

Entrance for adults is only if accompanied by a child!

We spend a long time at the water play, it was only a small area, but that didn't limit the fun at all. Instead the children climbed one of the big trees which was between the water play and a huge sand pit.
A good many attractions in Singapore have water play area for children, which suits the climate. Interestingly enough though there are no water fountain to quench one's thirst, one has to remember to bring their own water bottle or buy water at the various stalls around.

Water play right at the entrance.

The children garden had a few displays, regarding the photosynthesis cycle for example, also a herb section or ferns and then lots of active play in Nature:

Balancing over a little creek - yes, Jonas did it while carrying Sophie and no, nobody fell in!

This bridge wobbled nicely, luckily we didn't had to cross a gorge or raging waters.

We intended to stay for only one hour and started early to beat the heat, but there was lots to explore and after two hours it was getting humid and hot and we were only halfway through. So we have to come back! Then we'll go around first and then refresh at the water play.


SENTOSA ISLAND

Out of the spur of the moment we visited Sentosa again, Karsten saw a picture of a new water park (Port Of Lost Wonders) which had just opened that week on Palawan Beach and off we went. We arrived too early and had an hour to spare before the park opened, so we went to the beach first. Palawan Beach is connected to a tiny island via a suspension bridge and is therefore the "Southern Most Point of Continental Asia".  Since 1992 Sentosa Island itself is connected to Singapore via a causeway and Singapore in turn is connected to peninsular Malaysia via a causeway since 1923. (Causeway is a road/railway tracks over broad water on an embankment)

All of us at the Southern Most Point of Continent Asia.

Father duck gathers his 6 ducklings.

Swimming across

Head count

Tropical island feel

View across to POLW (right at the beach) and Merlion (top right)

Two princesses

Port Of Lost Wonders
Apparently Singapore's first kid's club by the beach, has in the middle a large water play area around which are placed activity areas, picnic area, shops and restaurants.
The entrance is separated into one for  adults and one for children. The children's entrance has three to four door frames which gradually grow smaller (children are growing) and the adult's version is the opposite because adults become children again.

Through the adult entrance

The activities are scheduled and children have to 'pay' for it. With the ticket purchase each child receives a Port Pass to collect stamps and also 100 Curio coins to pay for the activities.
David and Yannic chose for example the Bubble Bath, which cost 30 Curio for half an hour of bubble fun:

Yannic and David

The children had a good time ;-)

All aboard!

Home-life:

Yannic and Sophie

David and Yannic in listening position to the bedtime Bible story.

On the road

A carry bag for Legos

The inventors with their carry bags.

We also managed to visit the Titanic Exhibition (http://titanic.sg/) just before it moved on. Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures inside, it was worthwhile, lots of personal artefacts and also ship owned artefacts were shown. Then there were portraits of people on the Titanic, their lives and a timeline of the events. Walking through the exhibition we felt the air conditioned air gradually getting colder. After touching the surface of an ice wall  (= iceberg) we followed the path and stood on the rebuild of Titanic's deck, fairy lights looked like stars and it was very cold. On the night of the crash, the temperature had dropped which should have been a warning sign of the danger of icebergs. Towards the end there was a long list with all the names of the ones perished. Each person was given a Titanic boarding pass at the entrance with a name on it, now we could check if we would have survived or not.... At the very end of the exhibition path we walked on what looked like the sea floor. We saw artefacts buried in sand under the glass floor that we walked on. Impressive !
Katrin was touched by Captain Edward Smith death, he was in retirement and came back just for Titanic's maiden voyage and stayed on board as it sank.

Helix Bridge (front) and ArtScience Museum (behind)

The Titanic exhibition is in the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay, it looks like a peeled orange or open hand but it's to be reminiscent of a lotus flower. In the foreground is the Helix Bridge, the one Esther and her team colourfully rebuilt at school.

Helix Bridge and ArtScience Museum (left)

Some names around here are English origin or come from people like Stamford Raffles (who was the first to see and develop the potential of Singapore), Blackmore (a missionary who established  the Methodist Girl School next door, apparently one of the most prestige schools here) or Canning (Fort Canning was named after the Governor-General and Viceroy of India Viscount Charles John Canning).   

Other names are Malay. We had mentioned 'bukit' (hill). There are many more: jalan (street), kampang (village), jurong (shark) and pulau (island) to name a few. Some words written in Malay sound like the German or English word when read aloud, but then again are very foreign words.

Then there are obviously Chinese names in Chinatown, we still have to learn those, especially the writing ;-) Just like in Brisbane the street names in Chinatown are in Chinese characters and only sometimes in English too.

Another interesting wording is: "Can" as an affirmation. If you ask something, the answer is, if positive "Can!" instead of "You can do this" or "I can do this".

Not far from us is a small district called 'Holland Village', some shops but mostly restaurants can be found there. Wikipedia has a good photo of this enclave: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hollandv.JPG

We had lunch there in a Steakhouse, inside it was too cold, so we sat outside on the veranda, which was just beautiful, surrounded by plants and some fans we enjoyed our meal away from the hustle and bustle of the inside or the village itself.

To get home we used the MRT, train exit and entry at the platform is exactly regulated through coloured arrows (looks like the South African flag):

Katrin was talking to a senior guard the other day. In course of talking about Sophie he mentioned he himself has nine children because he's Catholic. At that time though Singaporeans were fined when they had more than three children, so for each child after his third he had to pay a fine and also higher fees for schooling etc. Nowadays Singaporeans are encouraged to have more children with incentives similar to a baby bonus. He wasn't bitter about the change in fact he said he's glad his children reap now these benefits. So far he has already 4 grandchildren.